Hal Jespersen's Cartography Services — Map Portfolio

Over the years I have produced over 4,000 maps in a variety of styles, but nowadays I focus almost exclusively on one: shaded relief topography, which provides a pseudo-three-dimensional view of the terrain. For large-scale maps (smaller geographic areas, such as battlefields) I usually try to include contour lines on top of the shaded relief. The color and black-and-white (grayscale) examples below represent the style I am most comfortable producing. There are two alternative styles, as I described more fully on the Map Services page:

1. Schematic/Hypsometric terrain (essentially filled-in areas bounded by contour lines, which get progressively darker as the altitude increases). This was the predominant style I used to use in the free Wikipedia maps, and you can follow that link to see examples. I am reluctant to use this style any longer, unless it is in full color publishing and unless all of the maps in the book use that same style.
2. Modern road networks can be included if the author's intention is to provide tourism- or preservation-related views of a battlefield, such as a driving tour. Some examples of driving tours are in the gallery. However, unless the map is in full color, it can become uncomfortably confusing to attempt to include both the modern and overlapping historical roads on the same map.

Portfolio Gallery

The maps in this portfolio are overlaid with watermarks identifying CWMaps.com, but this is only for my convenience in maintaining the gallery. The actual copyrights are held by the client historians or organizations that commissioned the maps, so you are not authorized to use any of these maps without permission.

The gallery displays one map at a time at full-screen size. Use the arrow buttons or the left/right keyboard keys to move through the portfolio; on a touch screen, swipe left or right. A description label is displayed over each map and can be dragged to any position within the image. The actual maps for publication are in 300 dpi PNG (color) or 600 dpi TIFF (black and white or color) formats; images in the gallery are web-resolution JPEGs.

View the Map Gallery →

There is an additional gallery of downloadable large battlefield maps I created for the Blue and Gray Education Society: click here.